We asked each artist in Cohort 3 a series of questions about how they navigate the world and express themselves through their practice. Here are Malaika’s words of wisdom.

Good: When did you first realize that making art was essential to how you move through the world?

Maliaka: Early on, I realized that I could speak through my hands before I really trusted my voice. Creating became a way to honor others and channel something larger than myself.

Good: What parts of yourself do you feel most seen in through your work?
Malaika: I feel most seen when people find something of themselves and their memories in my work—something ancestral, full of legacy, and larger than the present moment.

Good: How has your understanding of your identity shaped the way you create?
Malaika: My identity is embedded in every thread of my work. By knowing myself, I am able to speak more clearly, even when I’m not speaking at all. The more I know my history, the more I feel comfortable letting unknowns guide me too. I create from what I know, and from what might be.

Good: What story do you think your younger self needed to see in art—and are you telling that story now?
Malaika: My younger self needed to see that making could be a way of living—a real, sincere life built from her own dreams.

Good: How do you navigate the tension between visibility and vulnerability in your work?
Malaika: I focus on the work itself—if I feel an urgency to make it, the vulnerability becomes part of its truth. I try to focus on this urgency and the need, not the reaction or the stage. Sometimes making work takes something vulnerable and makes it a bit indestructible, which is a powerful feeling I find myself chasing after.

Good: What is a misconception people have about your practice—or you—that your art helps correct?
People think softness lacks power.

Good: How do your surroundings—physical, cultural, emotional—show up in your work?
Malaika: Growing up moving so much between countries taught me to carry home in myself and in my family. I’m always comparing, contrasting, and noticing the textures of different lives. My work reflects the places that I come from and honors those who have labored—not just to personally get me here, but also those whose labor sustains the world at large.

Good: What truth have you been circling in your work but haven’t said out loud yet?
Malaika: To remain tender is a form of resistance.

Good: If you had to strip everything back—materials, audience, career—what would remain at the center of your practice?
Malaika: The unshakable urge to make something that feels alive and necessary, full of texture and time—whether anyone sees it or not.

More about Malaika:

Malaika Temba (b. 1996, Washington, D.C.) is a Visual Artist based in New York. Temba creates textile works that honor the lineage of the diaspora’s aunties and femmes, addressing the responsibility, time, attention and patience expected of these laborers, comforters, nurturers, and providers. She wields fabric—an oft-overlooked material conflated with gendered notions of softness—as a resilient and unbreakable format to confront labor standards and global trade. Having grown up across Saudi Arabia,Uganda, South Africa, Morocco, and the United States, her lens and creative processes embrace globalization and intercultural connection by shining light on all of its intricacies. Temba graduated with a BFA in Textiles from RISD in 2018. In 2021, she was honored as the recipient of the YoungArts Jorge M. Pérez Award and since then, she has been selected for significant residencies:Art Omi (2023, NY), MASS MoCA (2023, MA), Bandung Residency, MoCADA + A4 Arts Alliance (2023,NY), Silver Art Projects (2024, NY) and the Textile Art Center (2024-2025). Temba has had solo exhibitions with Mindy Solomon Gallery (2021; 2024; Miami, FL), Lilia Ben Salah Gallery (2023; Paris,France), and Gaa Gallery (2025, Cologne, Germany). Her work has been collected by various public and private collections, including the collections of Jorge M. Pérez and Beth Rudin DeWoody.